When Parliament resumes on Tuesday, Eric Roozendaal will take his usual seat on the backbench among his Labor colleagues in the Legislative Council, but he will not truly be one of them.

By then, Roozendaal's colleagues will have gathered for a caucus meeting without him, thanks to the suspension of his Labor party membership following this week's appearance at the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

It must be humiliating. The man who used to run the Labor party in NSW as general secretary now cannot even participate in the most basic decisions of its parliamentary wing.

It is a spectacular fall from his position as treasurer of NSW under the previous Labor government, when he presided over the $60 billion state budget.

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It's not all bad for Roozendaal, though. He is still an MP and will continue to draw his annual backbencher's salary of more than $143,000.

And based on the evidence heard at ICAC this week about his purchase of a Honda for $10,000 less than its market price thanks to the apparent generosity of the family of his former colleague Eddie Obeid, he is likely to be able to continue doing so for a while yet.

Roozendaal might have been suspended, but it appears the biggest sin that can be attributed to him is that he accepted a favour and submitted false information to the Roads and Traffic Authority.

True, that is not a good look for a roads minister, as he then was, but the general view is that there is a real question over whether, even if a corruption finding can be made against him based on the evidence to date, a prosecution is likely. This is potentially problematic for the ICAC.

In his foreword to the latest ICAC annual report, Commissioner David Ipp, flags the current inquiry - which will also probe the involvement of former Labor ministers Obeid and Ian Macdonald in the granting of coal licences - as ''probably the largest investigation and public inquiry we have every undertaken''.

It is understood that the commission has been given about $3 million to fund the extra staff required to carry out the exercise. So, putting it bluntly, Ipp needs a result.

The annual report helpfully tallies the outcomes of the commission's past investigations.

It has achieved some good results, including a sentence of 5½years (later reduced to four years) for a former Roads and Traffic Authority manager, Terry Stepto, who was convicted in 2010 of defrauding the agency of about $300,000.

But while these types of cases are important they do not involve the big fish - the politicians - the public expects the ICAC to nab. Here its record is less impressive.

The director of public prosecutions is still considering an ICAC recommendation from last year that the former NSW planning minister, Tony Kelly, be charged over backdating a letter to authorise the purchase by the government of a former union retreat, Currawong, at Pittwater.

The former Drummoyne MP, Angela D'Amore, was found to have acted corruptly over wrongly claiming a staffing entitlement, but has yet to be charged.

In September the former Labor MP for Penrith, Karyn Paluzzano, received a one-year sentence of home detention over lying to ICAC and falsely claiming a staffing entitlement. She is appealing the sentence.

There is no doubt the commission's current public hearings, which are expected to run over five months, will be a trial for Labor in NSW.

But as the week of evidence into Roozendaal's matter made clear, it may also prove to be a significant test for the ICAC itself.